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| Photo: Ouma Wanzala |
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| Photo: Nation/NewsPlex |
In a troubling trend, performance in Mathematics and sciences in the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KSCE) examination has been declining for the last three years, a Nation Newsplex review of national examination data reveals.
As candidates prepare to sit the 2017 KSCE starting Monday, the analysis finds that an overwhelming majority of the KCSE candidates failed in Mathematics and the sciences from 2014 to 2016.
Nearly 90 per cent, or 493,184 of the 569,733 candidates who sat the Mathematics Alternative A paper last year scored between C- and E. This was about a 10 percentage increase from each of the two previous years.
In contrast, four per cent (20,682) of the 2016 candidates scored either an A or A-. Half the candidates scored an E, the lowest grade, while the average mean grade was D, a drop from D+ in 2014 and 2015.
Performance in the Maths Alternative B paper was even worse, with 99 per cent of the 1,442 candidates who sat the paper scoring less than grade C. Less than one per cent, or three candidates, scored either grade A or A-.
On average, the proportion of candidates who scored the two top
grades in both Mathematics papers was almost three times less than in
2014.
Last year, only 18 per cent of candidates who sat the Biology examination got at least grade C, a drop of more than half compared to 2015 when 40 per cent of candidates attained the grade and in 2014 when 38 per cent did the same.
The share of candidates who got D- and E in Biology in 2016 was almost triple (48 per cent) that of the previous year when 18 per cent of candidates got the same grades. In 2016, nearly 50 per cent of the candidates recorded the two lowest grades.
On the opposite side of the scorecard, only one per cent of the candidates got either A or A- in 2016, a fall from four per cent the previous year and five per cent in 2014. The mean grade attained in the subject last year dropped two places to D from C-.
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Source: Daily Nation
